GenAN paper achieves first sim-to-real transfer for muscle-actuated robots
dtrbchlr · x · 2026-09-18
A Max Planck-led paper accepted at CoRL reports the first successful sim-to-real transfer for a muscle-actuated robot arm.
- Muscle/tendon-driven robots are faster and safer but hard to model due to nonlinearity, friction and hysteresis
- Generalized Actuator Network (GenAN) learns the actuation model directly from joint-position trajectories — no torque sensors needed — and combines with rigid-body simulation for arm dynamics
- On PAMY2, a pneumatic artificial muscle robot, policies for goal-reaching, ball-in-a-cup and table tennis trained fully in simulation transfer to hardware, a first for a 4-DOF muscle-actuated arm
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